Thursday, 6 March 2008

Silverlight 2.0 Tools

Im sure everyone knows by now that yesterday saw the first day of MIX08 ad the incrediable footnote that gives us an insigiht into whats to come.

So with the relese of Silverlight 2.0 Beta what do we need to get started?

Well first off before we go downloading all the new software, you should probably delete all the current Silverlight installs you have on your machine such as Silverlight 1.1 and the tools for Visual Studio as you will be replacing these.

Once you have finished installing all the current things on your machine you first need need to get the Silverlight 2.0 Runtime.

This runtime will allow you to run any of the Silverlight apps that have been created using the new SDK, such as the Hard Rock Cafe memorabilia site. Which uses SeaDragon to zoom into any number of pictures, as you zoom in the pictures seem to be constantly buffed and enables you to zoom in far enough to see the stitching on shoes.

If you want to develop Silverlight apps you will then have to download the SDK which can be found here.

Finally the bit everyones been waiting for since this time last year when Silvrlight was first announced at MIX07 Visual Studio components for Silverlight allowing you to drag and drop components onto the Silverligt canvas, meaning you dont have to spend hours creating new buttons, lists or check boxes. The tools for Visual Studio can be found here.

Once installed you can start up VS2008 and witness all the glory of the Silverlight controls.

Also take a look at these videos of creating Silverlight 2.0 apps, based on ScottGu's posts.